Saturday, August 17, 2013

President Goodluck Jonathan's latest remarks
about the activities of the deadly Boko Haram sect were probably made in
all sincerity but they merit a comment if only because he inadvertently
admitted lapses and unpreparedness by government with respect to its
most important function,
i.e. securing the lives of Nigerians and their property. Speaking at
the State House in Abuja on Tuesday night during the breaking of Ramadan
fast with Muslim members of the diplomatic community, Jonathan said the
activities of the Boko Haram sect and its tactics of terror took the
nation by surprise.

The president regretted that attacks by the sect
resulted in the death of thousands of innocent Nigerians, including
security operatives. He however said that with the Federal Government's
commitment and with prayers by Nigerians, the insurgency has been
significantly contained.

Only recently, Defence Headquarters in Abuja announced that the
special military operation mounted in three North Eastern States since
May has reduced the level of insurgent-perpetrated violence in the
region by ninety percent. For once, this was a claim by Nigeria's
security agencies that appears to accord with realities on the ground.

While many Nigerians initially doubted that the military-led security
operations in the North East and other states could ever contain the
murderous sect's activities, the surge ordered by the president since
May when he clamped a state of emergency on the three states of Adamawa,
Borno and Yobe has evidently worked. So successful has the operation
been that the military-led Joint Task Force, which up until May was seen
by local residents as a bigger threat to their lives than the
insurgents, has undergone a complete reversal of fortunes in its public
image.

Where once community leaders were calling for its withdrawal,
hundreds of youth now formed vigilante groups, nicknamed themselves
"Civilian JTF" and proceeded to help JTF in manning check points and in
combing neighbourhoods to fish out insurgents.
Hence the president is right when he says the Federal Government's
actions have ameliorated the situation, even though he also acknowledged
Nigerians' prayers. Inevitably, as the violence dies down, hopefully
for good, the national soul-searching will commence as to exactly what
happened during Boko Haram's reign of terror, how and why we got there
as well as what we must do to consolidate on recent gains and, most
importantly, prevent a future recurrence.

President Jonathan unwittingly
kicked off this debate in his recent remarks to the diplomatic
community when he said the nation [read: the Federal Government] was
taken by surprise when the insurgency exploded first in the North East
and later spread to many other Northern states.

Why was the government "taken by surprise"? To begin with, the manner
in which the security agencies, most notably the police, handled the
case of captured sect leaders should have been a warning to the
authorities that fleeing sect members could be bent of revenge. Even
before the events of 2009, Boko Haram sect's activities in the previous
decade should have attracted high interest from the security agencies,
especially those ones of them that are in charge of intelligence
gathering and risk assessment.

Nor was Boko Haram the first time ever
that a misguided quasi-religious group took up arms against the Nigerian
state. The Maitatsine group serially unleashed mayhem in Kano,
Bulunkutu, Tudun Wadan Kaduna, Yola, Gombe and then Funtua between 1980
and 1993. Any security agency worth its salt should have known that such
a thing could happen again.

Of course, the socio-economic milieu that enabled deranged clerics to
recruit thousands of misguided urban youths for such operations still
obtains in Nigeria; in fact it has decidedly worsened since the 1980s
with a larger reservoir of unemployed youth and wider economic
disparities. As such, all that is needed at any one time is for some
event or person to ignite the powder keg. At the beginning of the Boko
Haram palaver, the Federal Government was much distracted by many of its
leading members' belief that the insurgency was but a reaction by
Northern power brokers at their loss of presidential power.

It took a
long and precious time before leaders of the Jonathan administration
came round to realise that this was not the case, that is if they ever
did. Nor do the Nigerian security agencies have any good excuse because
in the 52 years since this country's independence, the security sector
has gobbled up a larger proportion of the national budget than most
other sectors. That it was caught napping when a ragtag sect went to war
suggested that the sector did not utilise all those monies properly.

The most important thing now is to prevent these sad events from ever
occurring again, not only in the North but in any part of Nigeria. It
is clear now that security agencies, in particular the State Security
Service [SSS] must pay special attention to odd quasi-religious groups
and closely study their trouble- making potential. The police too must
do something to enhance its capability to handle internal insurgency in
order to prevent the military from taking over its duties as happened in
this case.

As for the military, which should never have been involved
in this campaign if only the police were trained to handle it, the
impact of these operations on its professionalism will only be felt in
years to come.
When all is said and done however, it is a steady improvement in the
economic fortunes of Nigerian citizens, effective poverty alleviation
measures, widening of educational opportunities, effective skills
acquisition programs, reduction in wealth gap, just implementation of
social programs, banishing the cancer that is corruption as well as
credible political leadership that will together erode the pool of
disenchanted and misguided youths available to undertake any crank
project that anyone will dream up. All these must be done as much as
possible to prevent ourselves from being taken by surprise again.